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Dance in the Rain

Dani Garavelli: Sturgeon comes out swinging, 11 September 2025

Frankly 
by Nicola Sturgeon.
Macmillan, 464 pp., £28, August, 978 1 0350 4021 6
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... On​ the afternoon of 14 August – the publication day of her memoir – Nicola Sturgeon was interviewed by Kirsty Wark in the McEwan Hall in Edinburgh. Sturgeon was wearing a red top and red shoes: she wears red on days she needs to feel in control. But the audience members didn’t want to tell her off, rather to thank her for ‘all you’ve done for Scotland ...

Diary

Dani Garavelli: Salmond v. Sturgeon, 1 April 2021

... the High Court in Edinburgh, listening to Salmond again. It was the day that Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon, Salmond’s chosen successor as SNP leader and Scotland’s first minister, announced the start of the UK-wide lockdown. Salmond, who had just been acquitted of thirteen charges of sexual assault against nine women, appeared to be ...

Short Cuts

Peter Geoghegan: Brexit and the SNP, 3 November 2016

... in the European Union. The Brexit vote led many to conclude that independence is now inevitable. Nicola Sturgeon is more cautious. Her speech at the SNP Party Conference in Glasgow last month was carefully judged. A second referendum was, she said, ‘highly likely’ – the same words she’d used straight after the Brexit result. She announced a ...

Short Cuts

Rory Scothorne: Not all Scots, 3 June 2021

... where change has to be justified as both recovery and continuity. Nobody does this better than Nicola Sturgeon. On the surface not much changed in last month’s elections to the Scottish Parliament. The SNP didn’t regain the overall majority it won unexpectedly in 2011 and lost in 2016. The distribution of seats changed by three: the SNP gained ...

New Unions for Old

Colin Kidd, 4 March 2021

The Case for Scottish Independence: A History of Nationalist Thought in Modern Scotland 
by Ben Jackson.
Cambridge, 210 pp., £18.99, September 2020, 978 1 108 79318 6
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Standing up for Scotland: Nationalist Unionism and Scottish Party Politics, 1884-2014 
by David Torrance.
Edinburgh, 258 pp., £80, May 2020, 978 1 4744 4781 2
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... seemed likely – and was warmly greeted by the SNP’s gradualist wing, which included both Nicola Sturgeon and Salmond. But the events of the past decade have destroyed the possibility of an uncontroversial shuffle towards a soft-focus devo-max-cum-independence-lite.It was​ never all about Scotland. The intertwined stories that Jackson tells ...

Short Cuts

Rory Scothorne: Labour or the SNP?, 20 June 2024

... compromises of Tory Britain. After the party’s fourth successive Holyrood victory in 2021, Nicola Sturgeon made a ‘co-operation agreement’ with the Scottish Greens that turned the SNP’s minority into a ‘Yes’ majority. Within the parties, this made sense, but the Greens are an activist party, less concerned than the SNP with maintaining a ...

Short Cuts

Tariq Ali: So much for England, 23 January 2020

... lead to independence? Johnson, with his huge majority, has said he will not permit another vote. Nicola Sturgeon is unlikely to opt for the Catalonian model of resistance. Will she accept devo-max? A lot will depend on how Johnson fares.The undemocratic electoral system has preserved two-party hegemony in the UK so far, unlike Germany, France and ...

Short Cuts

Sionaidh Douglas-Scott: The Withdrawal Bill, 17 August 2017

... delivered on the day the Withdrawal Bill was published the Scottish and Welsh first ministers, Nicola Sturgeon and Carwyn Jones, described the bill as ‘a naked power grab, an attack on the founding principles of devolution’. Under the Sewel Convention (now enshrined in law in the Scotland Act 2016), Westminster requires the consent of the devolved ...

Chasing Steel

Ian Jack: Scotland’s Ferry Fiasco, 22 September 2022

... Accused of incompetence, evasion and the misuse of taxpayers’ money, the first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and her colleagues have responded by talking about ‘learning lessons’, ‘saving jobs’ and ‘moving on’. Having renewed her demand for a second independence referendum, Sturgeon needs to ...

Bye Bye Britain

Neal Ascherson, 24 September 2020

... own devolved things. Drivers crossing the Severn into Wales faced courteous police questions. Nicola Sturgeon declined to rule out controls on the Scottish border if there were a fresh surge of infection ‘down south’. All three devolved governments had divergent policies over quarantine for incoming travellers, while England – finding its own ...

Diary

Audrey Gillan: The drubbing of Mohammad Sarwar, 22 January 1998

... Sarwar’s only concern. He was opposed by an intelligent, young SNP candidate, a solicitor called Nicola Sturgeon, who found it easier to shine on the soapbox than the somewhat wooden Sarwar ever could. More worrying was the discovery that Peter Paton’s computer and fax had been used not only for his own election leaflets and press releases but also ...

Nigels against the World

Ferdinand Mount: The EU Referendum, 19 May 2016

... If they bother to think about it at all, the Brexiters comfort themselves with the thought that Nicola Sturgeon fully understands how dire the prospects for an independent Scotland are following the collapse in the oil price. Can’t they see that if the UK voted to leave the EU, while the Scots vote, probably by some margin, to stay in, even moderate ...

Pop your own abscess

Rory Scothorne: Definitions of Poverty, 22 February 2018

The New Poverty 
by Stephen Armstrong.
Verso, 242 pp., £12.99, October 2017, 978 1 78663 463 4
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Poverty Safari 
by Darren McGarvey.
Luath, 244 pp., £7.99, November 2017, 978 1 912147 03 8
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... effectively the house publication of the Scottish political class. It has earned praise from Nicola Sturgeon, J.K. Rowling and Irvine Welsh, the latter two providing glowing quotes for the book’s cover, and has received positive reviews. It’s worth noting that one element of his critique which hasn’t been embraced concerns class: the ...

Superman Falls to Earth

Ferdinand Mount: Boris Johnson’s First Year, 2 July 2020

... the steadiness and sombre dignity of the first ministers of the devolved parliaments – notably Nicola Sturgeon – and then turn to the slapdash boosterism of Johnson and his associates, many of whom seem to have caught his feckless tone as well as his frightful virus. It is jarring to hear ministers claim that they are ‘proud of our ...

It’s Our Turn

Rory Scothorne: Where the North Begins, 4 August 2022

The Northern Question: A History of a Divided Country 
by Tom Hazeldine.
Verso, 290 pp., £11.99, September 2021, 978 1 78663 409 2
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... and the SNP, and his party has now pushed Keir Starmer to rule out a deal of any kind with Nicola Sturgeon. The next election should indicate whether the North, still battling to be heard, will continue to be kept in place by resentment towards its noisy neighbours.Hazeldine understates the region’s extraordinary military heritage – this is ...

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